Washington Slept Here: Two Nights in New Bern

In the spring of seventeen ninety-one, President George Washington set out on a tour of the Southern states, partly to show the flag of the new federal government and partly because he wanted to see every corner of the nation he now led. His carriage rolled into New Bern on April twentieth, escorted by a group of leading citizens who met him at the edge of town.

Washington lodged two nights, April twentieth and twenty-first, in the house built by John Wright Stanly, a wealthy shipping merchant who had died two years earlier. Washington recorded in his diary that he had found exceedingly good lodgings, and the visit clearly pleased him. He attended entertainments at the nearby Tryon Palace and commented warmly on the citizens of the town. The palace had been built as the residence of Royal Governor William Tryon, who governed North Carolina from seventeen sixty-five to seventeen seventy-one. Washington's diary says he sat down to dinner with the citizens at four in the afternoon and stayed at the ball until eleven that night. New Bern was then one of the largest cities in North Carolina. The Stanly House still stands in New Bern today, preserved as a historic site. Tryon Palace itself served as the state house until seventeen ninety-two, when the capital moved to Raleigh. A cellar fire destroyed it in seventeen ninety-eight, and the palace was rebuilt between nineteen fifty-two and nineteen fifty-nine.